Jude Sullivan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theintercessor) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sixthiterationlogs2017-06-07 08:19 pm
theintercessor) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-06-07 08:19 pm
[arrival] little wings of white flame; butterflies in my brain
WHO: Jude Sullivan
WHERE: Fountain, House 23, Schoolhouse
WHEN: June 7 + the night, day, and next day after.
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Mentions of death, bodies, general horror genre stuff in the intro; insect hallucination in the final prompt. Please see his opt out in the comments of his profile.
STATUS: Open
There were men hanging in the trees.
It comes to him like a word he'd had sitting at the tip of his tongue, given up on, and suddenly found hours after needing. In the forest, between where he'd crashed the truck--
he'd crashed the truck--
Between where he'd crashed the truck, and the edges of the empty town. There had been something in the road, another memory lurking the tall grasses of his mind, where things disappear and ambush in the dark. Four legs, no face, no idea why it should have any kind of face. He'd swerved the truck for it, he'd gone down the slope, he'd hit a tree. He'd hit his fucking head and that's the only reason, that's why it's so hard to recall.
That's the only reason.
Jude lifts a hand to his head, rubbing away more of the dried, flaking blood from his brow. He's woken up twice on the outskirts of town, fog rolling down from the mountains, softening the edges of dark pines and soaking his hair and jacket. This time, he remembers the bodies: he'd stumbled out of the truck, and he'd been afraid of something behind him. He couldn't quite run, but he'd stumbled as quickly down the rest of the slope as he could, finding the old paths, the trail broken into long steps by thresholds of exposed root. His head had throbbed for every hard footfall, and he'd been focused on his footing, but they'd been there in the corner of his eyes. Silhouettes hanging by throats and wrists, twisting on ropes.
He turns away from the single wide trailer, the silence in the park heavier than the clouds over the mountains. Everywhere else he's looked has been empty, like his childhood home had uprooted into the hills and their fog.
"Dad," he calls, throat tightening, voice wobbling. He calls it again, stronger, calls Charlie when he thinks about it. His feet carry him back toward the trees, as afraid of what he might find in them as he is of what he might find in the trailer. It feels like the fog is in and outside him, like his voice can't carry, like his feet are too light and too heavy on the ground. "Charlie," he calls again, and for all that he lives across town, terror chokes the name from him: "Parker?"
In the hush that follows, the silence is its own answer. There's a prickle at the back of his neck, a solid weight growing behind him, and the fresh tattoo on his shoulder flares to a burning itch.
"Hey, Jude."
There's a striking pain to the back of his head before he can even turn toward the voice, driving him into the dark.
fountain
Jude learned at an early age to play his cards close to the vest, and that fear should be chief among them. If people thought you weren't afraid of anything, they wouldn't have anything to use against you. He'd taken every dare, stared down every asshole, pushed himself through every heart-pounding moment until he could stand on the other side of it, a little harder but alive.
The only one he couldn't shake, but had at least managed to hide, was the fear of water.
He's been in it plenty of times since the first and last time he drowned. He's jumped off old ropes into lakes, he's taken the dive off the quarry's edge. He's gone under and held his breath just to prove he can handle anything the other guy can, but he'd been in control every time. He'd chosen it.
He didn't choose to be drowned in the tub when he was eight, seeking some higher power, and he didn't choose to wake up in it now, the burn in his nose and throat something from a nightmare.
Fear isn't a good motivator, but it certainly prompts action, narrows everything away from how and when and why to kicking until he pushes against a hard surface, even if it just sends him into another at his back. The space explored that much, he kicks again, shoving himself between walls until he finds he can touch them with hands outstretched, guide himself up and out of the water with a splash and hacking, whooping series of coughs. He rolls over the edge, then several times on the ground for good measure. His body catalogs dry earth, hard stones, and short grass, and the discomfort at his back turns out to be a pack when he finds the wits to examine himself.
Not his clothes, not his bag. Kneeling, he's still choking when he rips open the zipper, leans to one side without getting a look at the contents when he vomits up water and bile. He doesn't know when he last ate, he can't seem to stay conscious enough to keep track of time.
It wasn't this bright when he blacked out. It wasn't this bright, and strange as it isn't to find himself in a wooded path, last he checked the town didn't have a fountain. Coughing into his elbow, he skirts his gaze over it, taking in the treeline, the branching paths, the overbearing sun. This isn't the first time he's blanked or blacked out, woken up somewhere different, but it's the first time he's woken up somewhere new.
Looking down at the pack, its contents don't appear to be anything he recognizes as his or immediately useful, and he pushes himself up to wander around the edge of the fountain. "Dad," he calls only once, weakly, before a new kind of fear sends him into the cover of the trees.
house 23
Skirting the back of several large buildings, Jude had approached the house from behind, as wary of its potential emptiness as he was of what he might find inside. The heat of the day had stuck his scrubs to his body, and he'd assumed that if nothing else, he might find water or shade inside. The house itself wasn't familiar, but the shape of it made sense--like one of the homes in the nicer part of town, red siding popping against the green-grey of the forest, ivory siding glowing in the sun.
He'd circled its foundation, checking the windows he could stand or climb to see into. Avoiding the porch, he'd circled back the other way until he was reasonably sure no one was inside, and entered through the back.
Rather than left for the day, the house seemed to have gone unused for some time--dust on the furniture, a broken window at the front, a water stain in the dining room he linked to the shingles he'd walked over in his investigation of the outside. A bad storm, before the heat. Summer storms, when he'd set out for Hollow Creek just before the end of his fall term.
Finding the linen closet near the bathroom, he'd dried himself off and wrung out his clothes before putting them back on. The damp helped with the heat, and when he'd used the mirror to check the cut on his head, he hadn't found so much as a bruise. Had he crashed the car? Had he woken up on the edge of town? Touching the place where the cut had been, he felt a thin line under the hair. Already scarred over--maybe he was remembering something out of order. Maybe he hadn't gone home at all.
The sun hadn't gone down by the time he exhausted exploration of the house and warily watching the world through its windows. He'd slept on the window-seat in the dining room, curling one finger into the curtain's edge to check again and again for activity in the large structures beyond the trees and across the path.
When he startles awake, rushing up out of a dream--long drive, wet winds, storms over the mountains and something sinister in the passenger seat he refused to look at--the sun is still up, or up again. Its light is softer for now, and when he checks beyond the curtain, someone is moving between the buildings. Curiosity needles caution with its claws, moving him slowly to the front of the house, then out the door.
Coming down the porch steps, he stares openly with both brows drawn and a frown, still struggling between the desire for answers and the desire to stay hidden. "Excuse me," he finally says, fingers curling into loose fists and waiting at his sides, "Are there--many people here?"
schoolhouse
A mysterious canyon. Magic fountains, strange weather, sudden gifts, being watched--maybe it's all in his head, or maybe it's where everyone disappeared to from the town. He hasn't met anyone he knows, though he's met people convincing enough to think this isn't the kind of hallucination he's going to blink away and never mention to anybody. They'd even shown him a board at the inn, next to map. Notes and drawings about the place, none of it in anything close to his handwriting.
None of it making any fucking sense, but maybe that was a sign too.
He'd been reunited with his pack, some kind of standard-issue fare to match the scrubs. A change of clothes had been welcome after sleeping in the first sun-dried pair, and while he'd been fed and given the walking tour, he'd woken up today still wondering: what now. Still wondering: what did I leave behind.
Across from the town hall he's settled in next to, there are the ruins of a building described as a schoolhouse. What had happened to it seemed a sore subject, and Jude wasn't one to press. He's one to examine, so today he's rolled up the legs of his overalls against the heat, made use of the cap in his bag, and wandered over to dig through the wreckage. It looks a little like the aftermath of a twister, but it must have been a strong, specific one--even most of the trees seem intact around it, and the skeleton of the building seems like it was once part of a sturdy structure.
Climbing into the base, he starts gathering planks and rooting around beneath them. Among the insects and salamanders hiding under their shade, he pockets crumbling bits of chalk, errant playing cards, chess pieces, dice. More game pieces than he'd expect for a school, but maybe in a place like this, entertaining children is as important as teaching them.
Not that he's seen anyone younger than himself since he got here.
When he starts finding books, they go into a couple of piles, the majority of which is kindling. Most of the ones not torn apart look like they were caught out in the rain, dried now by the heat but barely legible. Opening one, it must have retained some moisture beyond the others, because it seems to explode in his hands, a writhing pulp of--maggots.
"Fuck," he says sharply, dropping it at his feet and scrambling back, brushing frantically at his arms. There's a spike of anxiety, a moment of choking fear, and when he closes his eyes to endure it, he feels nothing at all. When he opens them, his arms are clean, and the book is open to flaking, water-pulped pages.
Taking a deep, easing breath, he kicks it toward the kindling pile and skirts a look back at the path, in case someone was watching.
[Feel free to tag in with the explicit starters or something in-between: Jude wandering the trees away from the fountain, casing the house, peeking out windows, etc.]
WHERE: Fountain, House 23, Schoolhouse
WHEN: June 7 + the night, day, and next day after.
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Mentions of death, bodies, general horror genre stuff in the intro; insect hallucination in the final prompt. Please see his opt out in the comments of his profile.
STATUS: Open
There were men hanging in the trees.
It comes to him like a word he'd had sitting at the tip of his tongue, given up on, and suddenly found hours after needing. In the forest, between where he'd crashed the truck--
he'd crashed the truck--
Between where he'd crashed the truck, and the edges of the empty town. There had been something in the road, another memory lurking the tall grasses of his mind, where things disappear and ambush in the dark. Four legs, no face, no idea why it should have any kind of face. He'd swerved the truck for it, he'd gone down the slope, he'd hit a tree. He'd hit his fucking head and that's the only reason, that's why it's so hard to recall.
That's the only reason.
Jude lifts a hand to his head, rubbing away more of the dried, flaking blood from his brow. He's woken up twice on the outskirts of town, fog rolling down from the mountains, softening the edges of dark pines and soaking his hair and jacket. This time, he remembers the bodies: he'd stumbled out of the truck, and he'd been afraid of something behind him. He couldn't quite run, but he'd stumbled as quickly down the rest of the slope as he could, finding the old paths, the trail broken into long steps by thresholds of exposed root. His head had throbbed for every hard footfall, and he'd been focused on his footing, but they'd been there in the corner of his eyes. Silhouettes hanging by throats and wrists, twisting on ropes.
He turns away from the single wide trailer, the silence in the park heavier than the clouds over the mountains. Everywhere else he's looked has been empty, like his childhood home had uprooted into the hills and their fog.
"Dad," he calls, throat tightening, voice wobbling. He calls it again, stronger, calls Charlie when he thinks about it. His feet carry him back toward the trees, as afraid of what he might find in them as he is of what he might find in the trailer. It feels like the fog is in and outside him, like his voice can't carry, like his feet are too light and too heavy on the ground. "Charlie," he calls again, and for all that he lives across town, terror chokes the name from him: "Parker?"
In the hush that follows, the silence is its own answer. There's a prickle at the back of his neck, a solid weight growing behind him, and the fresh tattoo on his shoulder flares to a burning itch.
"Hey, Jude."
There's a striking pain to the back of his head before he can even turn toward the voice, driving him into the dark.
fountain
Jude learned at an early age to play his cards close to the vest, and that fear should be chief among them. If people thought you weren't afraid of anything, they wouldn't have anything to use against you. He'd taken every dare, stared down every asshole, pushed himself through every heart-pounding moment until he could stand on the other side of it, a little harder but alive.
The only one he couldn't shake, but had at least managed to hide, was the fear of water.
He's been in it plenty of times since the first and last time he drowned. He's jumped off old ropes into lakes, he's taken the dive off the quarry's edge. He's gone under and held his breath just to prove he can handle anything the other guy can, but he'd been in control every time. He'd chosen it.
He didn't choose to be drowned in the tub when he was eight, seeking some higher power, and he didn't choose to wake up in it now, the burn in his nose and throat something from a nightmare.
Fear isn't a good motivator, but it certainly prompts action, narrows everything away from how and when and why to kicking until he pushes against a hard surface, even if it just sends him into another at his back. The space explored that much, he kicks again, shoving himself between walls until he finds he can touch them with hands outstretched, guide himself up and out of the water with a splash and hacking, whooping series of coughs. He rolls over the edge, then several times on the ground for good measure. His body catalogs dry earth, hard stones, and short grass, and the discomfort at his back turns out to be a pack when he finds the wits to examine himself.
Not his clothes, not his bag. Kneeling, he's still choking when he rips open the zipper, leans to one side without getting a look at the contents when he vomits up water and bile. He doesn't know when he last ate, he can't seem to stay conscious enough to keep track of time.
It wasn't this bright when he blacked out. It wasn't this bright, and strange as it isn't to find himself in a wooded path, last he checked the town didn't have a fountain. Coughing into his elbow, he skirts his gaze over it, taking in the treeline, the branching paths, the overbearing sun. This isn't the first time he's blanked or blacked out, woken up somewhere different, but it's the first time he's woken up somewhere new.
Looking down at the pack, its contents don't appear to be anything he recognizes as his or immediately useful, and he pushes himself up to wander around the edge of the fountain. "Dad," he calls only once, weakly, before a new kind of fear sends him into the cover of the trees.
house 23
Skirting the back of several large buildings, Jude had approached the house from behind, as wary of its potential emptiness as he was of what he might find inside. The heat of the day had stuck his scrubs to his body, and he'd assumed that if nothing else, he might find water or shade inside. The house itself wasn't familiar, but the shape of it made sense--like one of the homes in the nicer part of town, red siding popping against the green-grey of the forest, ivory siding glowing in the sun.
He'd circled its foundation, checking the windows he could stand or climb to see into. Avoiding the porch, he'd circled back the other way until he was reasonably sure no one was inside, and entered through the back.
Rather than left for the day, the house seemed to have gone unused for some time--dust on the furniture, a broken window at the front, a water stain in the dining room he linked to the shingles he'd walked over in his investigation of the outside. A bad storm, before the heat. Summer storms, when he'd set out for Hollow Creek just before the end of his fall term.
Finding the linen closet near the bathroom, he'd dried himself off and wrung out his clothes before putting them back on. The damp helped with the heat, and when he'd used the mirror to check the cut on his head, he hadn't found so much as a bruise. Had he crashed the car? Had he woken up on the edge of town? Touching the place where the cut had been, he felt a thin line under the hair. Already scarred over--maybe he was remembering something out of order. Maybe he hadn't gone home at all.
The sun hadn't gone down by the time he exhausted exploration of the house and warily watching the world through its windows. He'd slept on the window-seat in the dining room, curling one finger into the curtain's edge to check again and again for activity in the large structures beyond the trees and across the path.
When he startles awake, rushing up out of a dream--long drive, wet winds, storms over the mountains and something sinister in the passenger seat he refused to look at--the sun is still up, or up again. Its light is softer for now, and when he checks beyond the curtain, someone is moving between the buildings. Curiosity needles caution with its claws, moving him slowly to the front of the house, then out the door.
Coming down the porch steps, he stares openly with both brows drawn and a frown, still struggling between the desire for answers and the desire to stay hidden. "Excuse me," he finally says, fingers curling into loose fists and waiting at his sides, "Are there--many people here?"
schoolhouse
A mysterious canyon. Magic fountains, strange weather, sudden gifts, being watched--maybe it's all in his head, or maybe it's where everyone disappeared to from the town. He hasn't met anyone he knows, though he's met people convincing enough to think this isn't the kind of hallucination he's going to blink away and never mention to anybody. They'd even shown him a board at the inn, next to map. Notes and drawings about the place, none of it in anything close to his handwriting.
None of it making any fucking sense, but maybe that was a sign too.
He'd been reunited with his pack, some kind of standard-issue fare to match the scrubs. A change of clothes had been welcome after sleeping in the first sun-dried pair, and while he'd been fed and given the walking tour, he'd woken up today still wondering: what now. Still wondering: what did I leave behind.
Across from the town hall he's settled in next to, there are the ruins of a building described as a schoolhouse. What had happened to it seemed a sore subject, and Jude wasn't one to press. He's one to examine, so today he's rolled up the legs of his overalls against the heat, made use of the cap in his bag, and wandered over to dig through the wreckage. It looks a little like the aftermath of a twister, but it must have been a strong, specific one--even most of the trees seem intact around it, and the skeleton of the building seems like it was once part of a sturdy structure.
Climbing into the base, he starts gathering planks and rooting around beneath them. Among the insects and salamanders hiding under their shade, he pockets crumbling bits of chalk, errant playing cards, chess pieces, dice. More game pieces than he'd expect for a school, but maybe in a place like this, entertaining children is as important as teaching them.
Not that he's seen anyone younger than himself since he got here.
When he starts finding books, they go into a couple of piles, the majority of which is kindling. Most of the ones not torn apart look like they were caught out in the rain, dried now by the heat but barely legible. Opening one, it must have retained some moisture beyond the others, because it seems to explode in his hands, a writhing pulp of--maggots.
"Fuck," he says sharply, dropping it at his feet and scrambling back, brushing frantically at his arms. There's a spike of anxiety, a moment of choking fear, and when he closes his eyes to endure it, he feels nothing at all. When he opens them, his arms are clean, and the book is open to flaking, water-pulped pages.
Taking a deep, easing breath, he kicks it toward the kindling pile and skirts a look back at the path, in case someone was watching.
[Feel free to tag in with the explicit starters or something in-between: Jude wandering the trees away from the fountain, casing the house, peeking out windows, etc.]
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